The present invention relates to the field of computer network applications and in particular to an apparatus and a method for providing page navigation in a multirole-enabled network application, e.g., Software as a Service (SaaS) application.
User experience of a website is of great importance to Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) who have been seeking a method to improve user experience. Efficient page navigation is one of important factors in improving user experience and enhancing user satisfaction.
In a traditional network application, a software provider typically investigates the demand of a specific customer to know a service flow of the customer and therefore can design well a page flow based upon predefined knowledge to accommodate user experience.
In contrast to this, SaaS is a pattern in which software is provided over the Internet so that a customer will not purchase any software but instead lease Web-based software from the ISV. Since a software service provided through SaaS is not oriented to any specific customer, and usage patterns of different customers leasing the software (also referred to “tenant” in the context of SaaS) tend to vary, user access behaviors of the different tenants also will differ from one another. Thus, a unified predefined page flow will burden some users.
For example, FIG. 1 illustrates an illustrative SaaS application regarding sale management, wherein atomic roles, e.g., “Salesman”, “Sale Manager”, “Stock Manager”, etc., have been defined according to the allocation of their tasks. As illustrated in FIG. 1, a tenant 1 is a middle-size enterprise with a large amount of sale, and therefore it is necessary to have different people responsible for tasks of order submission, order review and approval, stock handling, etc., respectively. Consequently, the predefined atomic roles of “Salesman”, “Sale Manager”, “Stock Manager”, etc., are allocated to different people (i.e., users). Thus, when a user in the Tenant 1 is configured with the role of “Salesman”, he is authorized to have an access to three webpages of “Sale Homepage”, “Order Generation” and “Order Submission” and to perform the task of order submission in a predefined page flow of “Sale Webpage”→“Order Generation”→“Order Submission”. When a user is configured with the role of “Sale Manager”, he is authorized to have an access to three webpages of “Sale Homepage”, “List of Sale Orders” and “Order Review and Approval” and to perform the task of task review and approval in a predefined page flow of “Sale Homepage”→“List of Sale Orders”→“Order Review and Approval”. When a user is configured with the role of “Stock Manager”, he is authorized to have an access to three pages of “Stock Webpage”, “List of Stock Orders” and “Stock Handling” and to perform the task of stock handling in a predefined page flow of “Sale Webpage”→“List of Stock Orders”→“Stock Handling”. In contrast to this, a Tenant 2 is a small-size enterprise with a small amount of sale, and therefore it is sufficient to simply have the same personal centrally responsible for the tasks of order submission, order review and approval, stock handling, etc., that is, the atomic roles of “Salesman”, “Sale Manager”, “Stock Manager”, etc., will be allocated to the same user. Therefore, the user is authorized to have an access to all of the foregoing pages and to perform all of the foregoing tasks in a predefined page flow of “Sale Webpage”→“Order Generation”→“Order Submission”→“Sale Homepage”→“List of Stock Orders”→“Order Review and approval”→“Stock Webpage”→“List of Stock Orders”→“Stock Handling”. However, it is preferred for the user of the Tenant 2 to enter the page of “Order Review and approval” directly after the page of “Order Submission” without entering the pages of “Sale Homepage” and “List of Sale Orders” and enter the page of “Stock Handling” directly after the page of “Order Review and approval” without entering the pages of “Stock Homepage” and “List of Stock orders”. The predefined page flow is not appropriate to the Tenant 2.
As can be apparent, how to recognize an access behavior pattern of a user and to provide hereby a more smooth page flow becomes a crucial issue for the ISV.
In the prior art, a technical solution has been proposed for mining an access behavior pattern of a user to recognize the access pattern of the user. However, pattern mining in the existing technical solution is performed separately for respective users, and it may take a long period of time to accumulate access data of the respective users in order to acquire their access patterns; and for a new user, his or her access pattern is unavailable, and consequently no personalized page navigation can be provided. Moreover, a large number of resources are required to calculate and store the access patterns of the respective users.
Therefore, there is a need in the art to address the aforementioned problem.